


Guilt

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 19:52:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19752682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: How do you get the nightmares to stop, especially when they haunt you during the day?Asked by emettkaysworld via tumblr





	Guilt

Office door opening and closing in one single move, Emma walked inside the sheriff’s office while taking her badge from her belt; throwing it into her desk where it clattered. She was late; she knew as much, but nothing except silence welcomed her. The kind of one she knew that, as a new mother, she should relish.

She quite couldn’t, however, not with the stack of paperwork she was supposed to be filling and sending to the mayor’s office. Office where the ominous lack of Regina’s presence made the task all that much harder. Muttering curses under her breath, she brought the mug she had been drinking from the previous afternoon to her lips; wincing at its coldness even as she drank the few drops that remained.

The flavor of stale coffee hit her before she was able to put the mug away; the vague feeling of how her heartbeat began to spike up one that made her squirm as she closed her eyes; tiredness creating spiderweb-like lines on her temples that seemed about to turn into a migraine. Migraine that made her sigh and sit at her office’s desk, fingers drumming the surface of the door as she felt muscles seizing, an odd feeling of being dropped descending around her, inside her, as she tried to regulate her breathing.

Emma could feel the walls of Robin’s apartment closing around her all over again, around the other woman who stood in front of her; suffocating, heavy with pictures and books she was sure that hadn’t been there the last time she had seen the place. Turning towards the window she glanced down at the city that spread below, at the cars and people in a feeble attempt of moving away from an atmosphere that glimmered with tension and power that felt alien outside the city that had become her home. She straightened her posture, pulling her shoulders back as she did so; locking the muscles while she felt her hands tremble, afraid as she was. Tired as she was.

She didn’t quite hear Regina moving closer to her, but she felt a hand swiping her hair to her right side over her shoulder before fingers traveled down her back over the jacket she wore. Sparkles thundering behind her eyelids with every blink, she bit her bottom lip harshly as the hand moved back up until it rested among her tresses, fingertips pressing the point in where the collar of the jacket met the nape of her neck.

She didn’t dare to move. She truly couldn’t get her muscles to twitch or answer to her commands when she felt the woman’s other hand rest gently on her hips as if holding her upright as if the other expected her knees to buckle.

“Stay still.”

The command was a soft one, one that came close to a purr as she swallowed down; skin prickling while she felt pressure on the back of her neck where Regina’s fingers started to draw a circle that kept on growing on diameter before they parted whatever was left from her locks, lips posing down her spine.

“Tell me why you left.”

The words sucked every drop of air out of Emma’s lungs; Regina’s voice, the way it echoed in her ears, turning louder for a moment destroying everything around them both; vines treading through the floor, the scent of mud and slowly rotting leaves filling the air as the scene transformed from apartment to Enchanted Forest. The Enchanted Forest from a realm similar to the one she had known but not the same; shadows that moved to the wrong way; birds that were less chirpy, just as melancholic as she felt. Just as guilty as she was.

She could see it now; the way Regina had nodded at her as if coming to terms with a realization Emma hadn’t been able to put into words until she had taken her first steps back in Storybrooke with the portal already closing and no way of going back to where they had come from. She could see it on the way sunrays stabbed her eyes, making her narrow them as magic bleed out of her in thick rivulets that coalesced at her feet, dirty white strands turning fainter against the grass and flowers.

“Tell me.”

This time the words didn’t come from Regina’s mouth, but it echoed inside of her all the same, a broken record she felt hammering from inside her brain, destroying every other thought, melding them all together, transforming her brain into a blazing mass that made her want to grasp her brain as she felt her legs beginning to give up.

She had always been good at running. She had excelled in it. On quick goodbyes and barely anything to leave behind. Attachment was a fickle thing; something that would make worse than good in the long-run for what she had learned over the years.

It wasn’t a thing she was proud of. She merely reacted; moving on autopilot as soon as she began to feel chains made of promises, of future and permanency constricting her lungs and tongue. It wasn’t a strength nor a weakness for her but the only way she had gotten used to survive and interact with those around her. A paper-mâché fortress that hadn’t been able to hold still the moment Regina had questioned her, back at Granny’s diner, brown eyes burning like embers.

She knew that the answer was feeble at best and cruel at worst but she was far too tired to think and she felt her lips move as she tried to put thoughts into words, strands of spittle forming at the corner of her mouth; her throat itching as the air around her turned darker, trees and leaves disintegrating yet again as they lose their definition and transformed into the walls of an office she knew far too well.

It wasn’t the memories, she told herself even if she knew that statement was only partially true. The memories were morsels of a life she could have had if she had dared herself to dream a little bit bigger, be a little bit bolder. It wasn’t the nightmares, the ones that stalked her when she went to sleep after putting Hope into her crib. It was, perhaps, a mix between the two concepts; the admission that she had done wrong one that didn’t work if she didn’t have the opportunity to apologize.

And she hadn’t been able to. Not right after she had made the decision to leave Henry and Regina behind, not when magic had surged around Storybrooke, enclosing the city in a merging realm in where many others had come forward with Regina herself steering them all with power and strength pouring out of her in a way that had made Emma feel faint and burning all over again.

She had been one to walk alongside the brunette. Now there she was; looking at an empty mug and dreaming of moments that were as easily twisted as stupid she had been.

How much, she wondered while picking the badge from where it rested, the metallic surface warm thanks to the residual body-heat it still held, how much had she been giving to herself to other’s perception of who she was? For how long had she been giving her back to the woman who had smiled at her with such sadness she had felt her lungs collapse as she had taken a step backward once and for all?

It wasn’t the long nights, it was the guilt that colored through them all, turning crisp memories into painfully muddy realizations that hit too close too quickly. It was how now, everywhere she went, everyone she talked to, echoed words she herself thought. Words that made her bite the skin of her lips raw, erase every trace of a marriage she wanted to annul. It was the fact that ever since Regina’s return her being able to see her had turned into an almost impossibility.

Because even if Regina’s smile towards her was still as warm, as important, as crocked, as beautiful as Emma remembered, there was a guarded tone there whenever they both spoke. The kind of one that made Emma’s heart ache with the cowardness that made her remain mute around an apology she didn’t quite know how to deliver.

And so there she stayed. Knowing that Storybrooke would be deserted until after the coronation. The one she had been invited by her mother with the kind of look that had made Emma glance away as guilt crept its way up, nightmares mounting around the corners of her vision in the form of thousands of “what ifs” that didn’t truly have a spot to grow. Not anymore.

She let the badge fall once more as she glanced at her watch. Henry had told her how it was going to be, how Regina didn’t seem to suspect a thing. She had almost wanted to laugh at that one because Regina would be able to see a fairy coming from a mile away, but she would remain blind to anything that would mean the people around them truly cared for them.

Which had been, perhaps, Emma’s own doom.

Nightmares, she thought succinctly, where much more than vague shapes from one went to sleep. Even if she would tackle those in the blink of an eye if that granted her a kind of boldness she feared she had lost entirely, buried beneath words others had linked, chained, pierced, into her. Yet, there wasn’t a way she could truly destroy those. Not while she remained mute.

Which was probably the only reason she still felt guilt. Guilt at wanting Regina’s touch, guilt at not having voiced it. Guilt at wanting to voice it. Guilt at still having hope and wanting to destroy it once and for all. Guilt, pure, pure guilt.

And need unaltered need.

She groaned at the pressure she could feel building inside her skull, stomach twisting.

Going for her phone, she stopped only once as she pushed the buttons, a crackling “Hello” reaching through the speaker.

“We are going to the coronation. Ready Hope for me.”


End file.
